What are people's experience with Aliexpress??

[byee]

There is a lot of discussion on this forum about AliExpress and I'd like to hear about your experiences.

I've been buying from eBay for years with the odd issue with the seller. I know there are lots of people on this forum which rather deal with Aliexpress vs eBay. Any issues I've run into with eBay its addressed in a timely manner with PayPal issuing a refund within days.

About 6 months ago, I signed up with Aliexpress and placed my first orders for a 2332 and 2432. Escrow charges your credit card immediately but holds the funds until you confirm the receipt of your product. Paypal pays the seller before the product is shipped. Paypay also offers the buyer protection against such as counterfeits, defective products, not as advertised, product not received to name a few.

Not comfortable ordering from Aliexpress, I place my first order for my DS2332 with a diamond rated seller. After about 3 weeks, I received an email from AliExpress that the seller was being investigated for fraudulent activities and has suspended their ability to sell temporarily. About 2 weeks later, I received another email from Aliexpress stating the seller has been suspended and escrow would be refunding me my monies within 4-6 weeks. You have to remember, all said and done I was charged $100USD for the 2332 when the order was placed.....paid my VISA charges when I received my statement. Received my $100USD refund 2 months later.

I placed a total of 4-5 orders separately for the 2332 and 2432 from sellers with a diamond ratings. 3 were cancelled due to suspicious activities. Regardless, I did end up with my 2332 and 2432 with hundreds of dollars paid to the Escrow service which I eventually did receive refunds later. Being Canadian, this resulted indirect cost to me - exchange rate differences when I buy vs refund as well as the fluctuating exchange rates never mind the hundreds of dollars owing to me from the Escrow service.

I recently placed an order on eBay for a 4MP turret which arrive to me in Canada within 10 days. Aliexpress for the 2 cameras was 30+ days.

I would never buy again from Aliexpress! My preference is to continue buying from eBay simply because eBay and Paypal are both registered as US companies governed by US Law. Issues and refunds are handled in days not weeks & months.

I'm not sure what laws govern Aliexpress.....Chinese Law? Based on my personal experience, I'm just not comfortable waiting months for a refund when Aliexpress has suspended or banned a seller due to fraudulent activities. Why does it take 4-6 weeks for me to receive a refund?

What has your experience been dealing with Aliexpress?

 

[alastairstevenson]

In about a year's buying activity on Aliexpress, and not any great volumes, mostly low-cost items - and not all surveillance products:

I've had 3 orders automatically cancelled on the 7-day 'processing time expiry' when the seller was unable to get stock for the lens size (this was when Hikvision started their attempted purge of on-line sellers).
The refund was automatic 2 days later.
I've had one seller and order suspended due to 'suspicious activities', the refund was automatic and from what I recall was about 4 days, the seller had a time to produce some info and didn't.
And I've just had one order that had an invalid tracking number from the start, but the seller claimed several times the item was in transit. 2 days before Purchase Protection expired - non-delivery - I initiated a dispute. Near the end of the 5-day time the seller had to respond, the dispute was closed in my favour and a full refund processed 2 days later.
Not a brilliant experience - but no money lost except for being held in escrow for a time.
I do feel pretty comfortable with Aliexpress buyer protection, and do accept that with such a huge marketplace, and the Chinese way of doing things, not all sellers are above board.
But I've used one seller who has been 100% reliable, and only deviated when they were not able to get Hikvision stock, due to Hikvision's efforts.
And a couple of the other orders I placed did seem a bit good.

I only use a pre-paid Mastercard for on-line purchases, just load it with enough credit for the current purchase, so not an open-ended problem if it gets compromised.

 

[Q™]

I've purchased 16 cameras from AliExpress using a number of different vendors and all were good, except for a purchase of three (3) Hikvision units from "CSST wholesale market." Here is his store: http://www.aliexpress.com/store/1021839

"CSST wholesale market" shipped me three (3) Hikvision DS-2CD2332-I 3MP units all of which arrived with badly hacked firmware (all of the cameras arrived with the same "endless reboot loop" issue). I had to pay someone here at ipcamtalk.com some money to downgrade all of the firmware and now the cameras all work fine. When I filed a dispute against "CSST wholesale market" he accused me of configuring the cameras incorrectly and was more than a bit rude. All-in-all "CSST wholesale market" was a bad deal and the guy got creepy about the issue. Other than this single bad experience all of my other AliExpress transactions have been A+++ (with the exception that delivery always takes a bit too long imo.

 

[badmop]

What if the sellers account on ali has been deleted and you need to work out a refund for bad product? Just file a claim with your credit card or something?

 

[byee]

I'm assuming the Escrow service is probably affiliated with Aliexpress in one way or another.

The sellers were deleted from Aliexpress after they were confirmed of suspicious activities.

My recourse would be to contact VISA if I did not receive the refund after the specified time by Aliexpress.

 

[epcjay]

Yay a fellow Canadian!

OP, if you look a few threads down, there's a discussion regarding AE sellers.

https://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthread.php/4789-AliExpress-Who-are-people-using

I've ordered about 32 cameras from 2-3 main sellers, and so far they have been ok. OP, which sellers are you using on ebay? I notice some of the ebay sellers ship from China, and are price slightly higher. I'd love to get some cameras within 10 days cause that good turn around time. My cameras usually come 20-25 days (maybe cause canada post is slow to toronto?) if I order 1 or 2, and if 4 or more, the seller will include DHL free of charge. CSST seller on AE also upset me because he didnt't follow clear instruction on the "deal" that was made. Banned them in my books.

Also, selling on ebay doesn't mean you are in US or Canada, it could mean your elsewhere, and no police enforcement can enforce any laws to get these guys in trouble. It's hard enough enforcing laws on US sellers. Had one guy take my money, unloaded to his bamking account, unregistered, never shipped the item and paypal couldn't do jack. BMO mastercard took 2 months to sort the matter out for me

 

[alastairstevenson]

I'm assuming the Escrow service is probably affiliated with Aliexpress in one way or another.

When you pay for an item, Aliexpress take the money and hold it 'in escrow' and don't release it to the seller until the buyer acknowledges delivery and is satisfied with the item.

What if the sellers account on ali has been deleted and you need to work out a refund for bad product? Just file a claim with your credit card or something?

On my last attempted purchase of a (cheap) Hikvsion camera, the seller closed the Aliexpress store and said he'd gone home to get married.
He'd claimed the item had been shipped, so I waited till near the end of purchase protection before initiating a dispute.
Despite the store being closed, there was no problem with the refund.

 

[badmop]

I meant if you bought something, the store was deleted, the protection ran out and say 40 days later the product died due to bad quality or something.

 

[epcjay]

I meant if you bought something, the store was deleted, the protection ran out and say 40 days later the product died due to bad quality or something.

Guys here almost don't expect any warranty ordering from AE becuase it's cost prohibited to ship them back

Sent from my LG-D852 using Tapatalk

 

[Fruit]

I would treat aliexpress like loaning out money to a friend...if they pay it back, great! just have low expectations that they won't pay you back and you'll never hear from them again...

Don't think I would order anything over $50 from aliexpress at a time.

 

[bearclaw]

I have ordered a bunch of stuff from AliExpress and so far the only issue I had was resolved to my satisfaction and was a learning experience. I have bought cameras and cables and ir illuminators a mini computer and memory. The only issue I had was that the memory I bought was counterfeit. I opened a dispute and told the seller that I was not paying for the item and that I would not ship it back to him as shipping counterfeit materials is a criminal offense. I got a full refund and now I will not buy any memory from China. As for the cameras etc. I would say do your homework on the product and then do a cost benefit analysis on buying a Chinese product not expecting a warranty and a NA/EUR product with a proper warranty. For me it worked out to buy the Chinese product. Im not sure I would buy anything really expensive unless I was familiar with the product and had dealt with the seller before. Overall AliExpress is fantastic for little things and I think they have tried very hard to make people feel safe about their purchases with their escrow service and the dispute resolution process.

 

[badmop]

Also watch buying any SD Cards or USB flash drives from EBAY also, regardless of the sellers feedback. It's most safe to purchase in store. Your data, photos, documents, whatnot are not worth the risk of losing them.

FAKE memory will allow you to copy all of your files onto the device, but then when you go to open some of the files, they are corrupt. Most memory is like 8gb or less but will read as 16gb, 32gb, etc.

 

[klasipca]

I've been shopping at ali for about 5 years, never had issues really that didn't get resolved to my satisfaction, but then I never ordered anything more then $400 in one purchase

 

[Larebear]

I've purchased most of my cameras from Ali and never had any problems, other than one camera (Ratingsecu) that must have been shipped by row boat from China. It took more than two months to arrive.

 

[klasipca]

other than one camera (Ratingsecu)

Oh, yeah, how is that cam? I don't see it in your list anymore

 

[NVR]

After I find a seller from Ali, I order via skype, still protected by Paypal. I have used skype seller melissa.monitech fair prices, with great results and quick DHL shipping.

 

[Larebear]

Oh, yeah, how is that cam? I don't see it in your list anymore

I never did mount that camera. I used it under the house for a while as a mouse camera but now it's sitting in a box with quite a few other cameras that I'm not using right now. I may eventually replace one of my old wireless Dericam's in the garage with the Ratingsec, since it supports wireless and Poe and includes a mic for audio.